Razed by Narcissists: Awakening to the Toxic Cycle of Narcissistic Relationships in My Life

Alex Flores
Sep 3, 2018 · 8 min read

There I was, 4 months free from one of the most toxic workplace cultures I had ever been a part of before. I had only been there for about 2.5 years but this place was easily the most extreme version of all the other private Christian schools where I had worked for over the past decade. But in some weird way it was just what I need to finally break free from not only this particular job, but the culture itself.

And in only 4 months since torching that bridge forever, I started to see parts of me that I hadn’t even realized had gone numb starting to come back to life. No longer surrounded by dozens of larger than life personalities, I could hear myself think again. I started taking pride in my appearance once again, looking for opportunities to express myself creatively, eating healthy and working out more consistently.

Things started to look so good that I thought I’d actually say it out loud! And then literally within days of declaring myself having officially got back the life I always knew I was capable of living … my wife and I got the phone call. This time it wasn’t our church or our jobs, it was a toxic relationship dating further back than either of those: parents. And for all the overly dramatic situations my parents or my wife’s parents have been able to conjure up for themselves, I have to hand it to them on this one; this time they had reached an all new level of drama previously inconceivable to my wife or myself. Seems like the older they get, the more they step up their game.

As it’s a highly complex situation, all I’ll say is that what happened sucked, it 100% didn’t need to happen at all let alone the way it happened and it forced my wife and myself to come face-to-face with some very harsh realities about our past, present and future.

The Nature of Narcissists

Terrified and overwhelmed I almost immediately started listening to podcasts and reading books on overcoming obstacles. In episode 640 “How to Overcome Obstacles” from the School of Greatness podcast, I heard Lewis Howes mention how he’s seen parents get in the way of their own kids and how he attributes much of his own success to the fact that his mom never did this to him.

Never having considered this notion before, I started to examine this topic further and before long I was watching YouTube video after video on the topic of narcissism. In almost every explanation I could recall a moment, sometimes a dozen moments, that could serve as a perfect example of narcissistic behavior coming from my parents. Soon after I was reading the book “How to Kill a Narcissist: Debunking the Myth of Narcissism and Recovering from Narcissistic Abuse” by JH Simon in which he fairly comprehensively discusses what a narcissist is, what they want and how to negate their effects on you.

What I learned from this study is that a narcissist is a person unable to feel any shame in how they relate to others and they seek out emotionally sensitive targets to serve the grandiose image the narcissist has of his or herself. Emotionally sensitive children are the perfect targets for these types of individuals because their dependence on the narcissist parent for survival as well as their empathetic and nonjudgmental nature lends most easily to being manipulated by the narcissist parent.

The primary method the narcissist parent uses to attain control over the child is to play themselves up so large and when necessary knock their target down so low that the target learns to become 100% dependent on the narcissist for love and self-acceptance. Once the narcissist has the target seeking love and self-acceptance from them alone, the narcissist is able to use it as bargaining chips to keep the target under their control and in full-time service to the grandiose image of themselves. The narcissist literally shames their target into submission.

Pretty crazy right?

The Lifelong Pattern of Narcissistic Relationships

After wrapping my head around this idea I immediately began to replay countless interactions with authority figures such as parents, managers and pastors which all served as undeniable evidence of this dynamic. I saw it in more examples than I can list but to name a few:

  • weekly sermons telling me how horrible I was as a person
  • a mother telling me she lost the best years of her life raising me and my brothers
  • and a former manager trying to associate a humble non-self-serious approach to work as negative reflections of my character

What did all of these dynamics have in common? Setting aside all of these dynamics being with other self-proclaimed “Christians” (because that would be too easy of an answer), what they had in common is that all of these individuals wanted something from me:

  • The church wanted me to serve
  • My mother wanted me under her control
  • And my manager wanted to see how much more he could get me to do beyond what my contract stated

And they all used the same method to try and manipulate the situation: shame.

I’m sad to say that for a long time, they had a high rate of success. Without a doubt, I played a part in it too. This narcissistic dynamic was so hard-wired into my programming that it was my “normal.” What “normal” dictated at that time was that certain responses were acceptable like complaining, joking (the narcissists love that one) and getting passive aggressive about it; but trying to change it was unacceptable. Perhaps for that reason this is why any time I left one narcissistic dynamic, I would only immediately find myself right back in another. Whether it was leaving a job or moving out of state, every attempt to fix this problem was only ever an attempt to cure the symptom and not its cause. Like a heat-seeking missile, any attempt at departing from my trajectory would just course correct itself regardless of what I wanted.

The Truth About My Own Narcissism

For a myriad of reasons, it’s easy to excuse narcissists especially those we hold most dear. We know where they’re coming from right? We know they don’t mean that horrible thing they just said … right? My mother was abused and grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home. Because of her childhood abuses, which were many, my brothers and I always kept this in mind when she would lash out in fits of rage and anger. We know that she was just afraid of something horrible happening to us because horrible things happened to her from a very young age pretty much all the time.

When I combine this backstory with what I’ve recently learned about narcissism, I start to see that a narcissist is just a wounded child in adult form who never learned how to ask for the things they want in life like an adult would ask. Looking at it that way, I saw that I’m guilty of narcissism too! In any facet of my life where I both had experienced many prior disappointments and also wasn’t taught how to ask for what I wanted like an adult would ask, I too would behave like a narcissist and see my immature childish behavior justified.

To see that I am just as capable of playing the narcissist in any facet of my life not only helps me to be more compassionate toward narcissists but also serves as a sobering reminder that I have no reason to think that I couldn’t end up just like a full-blown narcissist too if I’m not careful. Whose to say that the complete and total narcissists in my life didn’t start out allowing narcissism to run rampant in specified facets of their life as well?

Coexisting with Narcissists yet Moving Forward Still

When I would behave like a narcissist, I ultimately still would never get what I wanted or if I did, it wasn’t anywhere near as sweet as it would have been had I asked for it the right way. All I would ever be able to accomplish when I would behave like a narcissist would be hurting the people who cared about me most and who I claimed to care about most. As sorry as I am for this, I can’t imagine the horror for the complete narcissist who will one-day realize the devastation they’ve wrought on the lives of those they claim to love most dearly. I never want that to be me, so I’ll stay on guard for narcissism in my own life.

As my wife and I navigate our latest episode in dealing with our narcissistic parents, here are a few takeaways I’ve gotten from this whole experience that I’d like to share with you:

  1. I gotta watch for ways in which I’m behaving like a child to get what I want versus behaving like an adult. I have no reason to believe I can’t end up just like my narcissistic parents so I need to stay on guard for childish behavior in my own life. At the end of my life I want those whom I love most to have more than just memories of words saying I love them but actual proof.
  2. I gotta keep continually improving myself and increasing my self-awareness. Thankfully, I think these two things go hand-in-hand. Self-improvement creates self-awareness which not only helps me be better with knowing what I want most in life but it also gives me a better set of tools for acquiring the things I want most in life.
  3. I gotta get as far away from narcissists as possible. In stark contrast to the Bible verse, these toxic individuals aren’t self-aware enough to articulate the plans they have for me but if they could I think they would say something about how they only have plans to impoverish me, plans to harm me, plans to take away my hope and rob me of my future. Knowing I can’t 100% get away from them because they’re family, I’m going to do the best I can to keep them at an arms length and surround myself with better people at every opportunity.
  4. I can’t give up on humanity because of a few bad eggs. The whole reason I’m writing this article and why I haven’t written one like it before is because one of the recommendations in combating narcissism from JH Simon’s book was to be true to myself. My parents would hate it if they knew I was writing this article but I have to speak my truth and trust that there are other good humans out there who can relate with another human being like myself. I know I’m not the only one. Believing not everyone out there is like the narcissists and acting upon it is a critical step in ending the toxic cycle of narcissistic relationships in my life.
  5. I gotta do what? I gotta believe! I must refuse to buy into the lie, I actually CAN live up to my potential. These selfish grown children broke the rules and sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind because it was in their best interest as narcissists. However, it was never their right to say the things they said or implied so there’s no need to give them the satisfaction of trying to prove them wrong. They are not gods among men, they are just normal people suffering from a god complex. I’m going to disassociate from their lies and live up to my potential because I was born with that potential. Not that I need to, but I will prove everything I ever needed to prove just by believing in myself and acting on it.

To anyone else in a similar situation as me, I hope this article proves helpful and encouraging to you. We can’t change the past but I truly believe, if we’re willing, we can take the broken pieces of our lives left behind by the narcissists and reassemble them into a more beautiful life than we had ever previously dreamed possible.

Alex Flores

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Figuring out life … one article at a time

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